Older Well Tempered Belts

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SteveFord

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Older Well Tempered Belts
« on: 3 Mar 2016, 12:08 am »
I just received a belt from an eBay seller (vintageaudioforyoutoo) and it's a PRB FRX35.1 and I'm happy to say it works perfectly.  It's a much heavier duty item than the originals which were slipping pretty badly.
Pitch is now rock solid so I'm very pleased with how it all worked out.

Triode Pete

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Re: Older Well Tempered Belts
« Reply #1 on: 3 Mar 2016, 12:42 am »
Hi Steve,
How are the sonics?

According to Bill Firebaugh and others, the original belt (when in great condition) is the way to go... You can clearly hear the differences between an OEM belt & substitute belts...

My $0.02,
Pete

SteveFord

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Re: Older Well Tempered Belts
« Reply #2 on: 3 Mar 2016, 01:39 am »
It sounds fine to me.  The turntable came with a spare belt but it didn't last very long before Johnny Winter sounded like he weighed 400 pounds.

threadkiller

Re: Older Well Tempered Belts
« Reply #3 on: 3 Mar 2016, 03:44 pm »
Yes, Bill told me recently the very same thing, Pete. He said they were treated belts and would last a very long time, and also sounded the best out of the many many he tested. This was only in talking about the Classic. The Reference was not his table, as most of you know.

eatapc

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Re: Older Well Tempered Belts
« Reply #4 on: 22 Mar 2016, 04:29 pm »
When I upgraded to the well-damped platter when it first came out (when was that, early '90s?) I got a new belt but didn't use it. Last year I noticed that the platter was taking longer to get up to speed, indicating that the original belt had stretched a bit. Rather than move the motor to put more tension on the belt, I put on the "new" belt, which was over 20 years old. The platter now comes up to speed very quickly and the stability is excellent. Here's a screen grab from my iPhone using the Feickert PlatterSpeed app and a test tone from the old Telarc OmniDisc. It actually looks too good to be true, but that's what I consistently got.